


Sink or Swim

by machine_dove



Series: Merman Sam [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (At least as far as TFA), (no really), Canon Compliant, Depression, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, mermaid au, merman Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8134726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machine_dove/pseuds/machine_dove
Summary: Instead of crashing in the Arctic end ending up frozen for seventy years, Steve crashes into the Atlantic, where he's rescued by...a merman?





	1. Chapter One

Steve felt hollow, like the fire that had always burned inside him had finally run out of fuel, leaving only a thin shell of skin and bone behind.  The intelligence from Zola (don’t think about that mission, don’t think about what you lost) had led them to a Hydra base in Algeria, where he had barely made it onto the plane Schmidt had launched, loaded down with enough high-tech bombs to take out the entire east coast of the United States.

The Red Skull was gone, dissolved into nothing by the glowing cube, which had melted a hole in the floor of the plane and dropped into the ocean.   _ It’s safer there _ , Steve thought with tired satisfaction.  There, at least, it wouldn’t be killing anyone else.  Years of war had left him with few illusions about what his own side would do with something so powerful in-hand.  Sometimes it seemed like the only difference between them and their enemies were where the people they killed had been born.

He looked over the radar, but it just confirmed what he had already seen through the cockpit windows - there was no land in sight, nothing but endless blue ocean.  Beautiful.  It had been an eternity since he had seen something that spoke to his soul.  Bordeaux, maybe, that barn the Commandos had sheltered in that had held statues so gorgeous that it was like time itself had stopped, marble carved into flesh so real that it looked soft instead of hard stone, and drapery so fine that even the pale, filtered light of the barn made it glow.

Peggy -- Peggy was beautiful too, but in a different way, the kind of beauty that was perfectly at home on a battlefield amidst the mud and the damp, perfumed by cordite and adorned with steel and brass instead of gold.  Instead of a hothouse rose, she was the gentian that sometimes grew on the battlefields of France, stubbornly, beautifully alive even in the face of so much death.  Jim would gather the flowers when he saw them -- they meant integrity, he told them once, and he’d brew them into a tea whenever someone came down ill with the common fevers or dysentery that had followed soldiers onto every battlefield since the beginning of time.

She had tasted like lipstick, and tea, and lost opportunity.

The plane controls were locked, and there didn’t seem to be any way to change them.  Altitude seemed to be the only control that responded, and that didn’t leave him with many options.

Maybe there was another choice, but he was so tired.  Maybe, just this once, it was okay to do the easy thing instead of the hard.

He reached for the radio, feeling the effort it took just to raise his arm, like the air itself was fighting him.  “There’s not going to be a safe landing, but I can try to force it down.”

Peggy’s voice broke through the sharp crackle of static.  “I’ll -- I’ll get Howard on the line, he’ll know what to do.”

“There’s not enough time,” Steve said as his head dropped back against the seat, feeling thick and heavy.  “This thing’s moving too fast, and it’s heading right for DC.  I’ve got to put it in the water.”  That beautiful, beautiful blue water, so many shades and hues, more than he had ever imagined existed.  He could aim the plane where the water was darkest, so the plane could sink straight to the bottom, deep enough that nobody could ever dredge up these abominable bombs again.  He could serve his principles in death as he had tried to in life.

“Please don’t do this.  W-we have time, we can work this out.”  God, the pain in her voice hurt more than any bullet.

“Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere.  If I wait a lot of people are going to die.”  There had been so much death.  Erskine, Toro, the prisoners in that hellish camp they had liberated where even the survivors looked like they had seen the face of death.  Bucky.  “This is my choice.”  It was easy, in the end.  His hands found the controls on their own, forcing the plane down towards the bright blue ocean.  “Peggy?”

Another crackle.  “I’m here.”

“I’m going to need a rain check on that dance,” he said, a faint smile sliding onto his face.  It would have been nice to dance finally, with the right partner, Bucky and his girl across the floor moving to the same music, that double date that Bucky had always wanted.

“All right.  A week next Saturday at The Stork Club.”  Oh, Peggy.  Always so strong.  When are you allowed to be weak?   


“You’ve got it,” he said as blue filled his vision, sky sliding away in favor of the endless sea.

“Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late. Understood?”  The pain in her voice was so raw -- it would have been nice to save her from this, but he still couldn’t regret what they had found together.  If there was one thing he had learned from the war it was to cherish any of the good you could find, no matter how fleeting, no matter how it might end.

“You know, I still don’t know how to dance,” he said, and there was that smile again, sneaking up on him.

“I’ll show you how.  Just be there.”  But he wouldn’t be.

“We’ll have the band play something slow.”  He could picture it, Peggy dressed in silk instead of using it to parachute, wearing real nylons, smelling of rosewater instead of gunpowder.  He’d hold her close, give her the space to be delicate, glory in her laugh when he stepped on her toes instead of sweeping her around the floor.  “I’d hate to step on your --”

 

* * *

He was aware of pain, burning, a parched dryness in his throat and the red heat of burned skin momentarily soothed by the splashing of water that washed over too quickly to provide any real relief.  And a voice, too, like a constant thread tethering him to his body.

“Man, I have no idea what you eat, but I have met humpbacks who weighed less.  And were considerably easier to tow.  You’re about as streamlined as an oddly shaped rock, you know that?  I don’t even know why I’m doing this, you --”

And then everything went dark again, and peaceful, and if time passed he had no way of marking it.

 

* * *

It was dark, the next time he drifted towards awareness, but not the same darkness that had swallowed him before.  His throat burned, and he moaned slightly as he tried to move.

“Hey, no, none of that now.  Let me help.”

A hand supported his head, and a cup was raised to his lips, filled with the best water he had ever tasted.  It was tepid, and slightly brackish, but it was good enough that he would have cried, if he still had the ability to form tears.   


He tried to move again and whimpered as pain shot through him, coming from everywhere.   


“I’ve got you, don’t try to move, you’re safe here.”

Those hands, so gentle, guided him back down and then vanished.  Before he could protest their loss they came back to lay something cool and slightly slimy across his forehead.  It felt better than anything had any right to feel, and he could feel sleep rising up again to swallow him.   


“Wait,” Steve said, grabbing for those hands, desperate to get his message out.  “The...cube.  The blue cube.  Have to…”

But he wasn’t fast enough, and the darkness claimed him again.

 

* * *

When he woke again he felt clearer, more fully present in his body than he had been since before he had gotten on that damned plane.  He was alive, that much was clear, and didn’t seem to be a prisoner, but beyond that it was hard to be sure of anything.  He was in a cave, lying on a woven mat of...something fibrous.  A plant of some kind, maybe?  He had been stripped down to an unfamiliar pair of shorts at some point, and he shivered at the realization that he had been so completely vulnerable and unaware.  There was a clay jug of water next to him, and he grabbed it gratefully, drinking deeply.  If it was poisoned the serum should take care of it, but if whoever held him had meant him harm they could have done anything to him while he had been out..

He stood carefully, feeling shaky, weak in a way that reminded him of recovering from pneumonia more than anything else.  His bones ached too, deep and constant, testifying to what he must have survived.   


It was clear that someone lived here - there were nets, jars, and on the wall a rack of knives and spears.  Steve grabbed a knife, missing the familiar weight of his shield, more to have the reassurance of a weapon than because he thought he might need to defend himself.

His legs were unsteady enough under him that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to defend himself anyway.

Steve made his way off the raised, dry shelf and onto the main floor of the cavern.  A large archway to one side revealed another chamber, and he leaned on it for support as he scanned the second room of the cave.  It was small, but even in the low light he could make out the reflection of water splashing against the slanted grade of the floor.  Seawater, and the likely source of the salt smell that hung heavily in the air.  Judging by the mineral deposits on the floor and low on the walls of the cave, the high water mark was several yards from the opening of the arch.  It seemed likely that this cave remained completely dry in all but the worst storms.

At the other end of the cavern was a smaller opening, the source of the light that illuminated the cave.  Steve took one cautious step forward when a sudden splash behind him sent him diving for cover.

At least, he had intended to dive for cover, but neither his legs or his arms cooperated, and he ended up sprawled on the rocks, seeing stars as his body protested the abuse.

“Hey, hey now, no need for that,” a gentle voice came from behind him.  Behind him, where there had been only an empty cave.   


Steve clenched his hand around the knife and held it out, hands shaking slightly as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.  There was a man there, sitting in the water, eyes wide in alarm and hands up, open, not offering any kind of threat.  Of course - the cave was connected to the sea, the channel must be large enough to swim through.  Steve let his arm drop, although he kept his grip on the knife.

“Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the newcomer said.  “Truthfully, I wasn’t completely sure you’d even wake up.  You were hurt pretty bad when I found you, and then you had one hell of a fever for longer than I’d have imagined possible.  You’ve been out of it for a long time now.”

“Who?  How --”  Steve couldn’t seem to make his thoughts settle enough for coherency.  None of this made sense.  The last thing he remembered was being in the plane, the radio --

“I’m Sam.  You crashed your giant hunk of metal right into my farm, which let me tell you, His Imperiousness is not at all happy about,” he said with a bright grin, but that didn’t make any sense at all.  There hadn’t been a farm, there had just been the blue of the ocean -- or was it the blue of Schmidt’s infernal cube? -- and Steve could feel the panic rising up again, clawing at his throat as rose to his feet again and scrambled away from Sam, towards the light at the other end of the cave.  He ignored the shouts from behind him, adrenaline lending him the strength he needed to escape.   


The cave let out into the open air, and Steve scrambled for higher ground, climbing up the rocks to gain a better vantage point.  It didn’t take him long to reach the top, but the view didn’t do much to answer any of his questions.  He was at the top of a stone outcropping, at one edge of a natural cove.  The beach below sparkled in the setting sun and beyond that the ocean spread out to the horizon.  Behind him was what looked like endless jungle, lush and covered with unfamiliar vegetation, loud with insect and animal noises that just drove home how alien this place was.

He worked his way back down the rocks, giving the cave a wide berth.  There hadn’t been any visible signs of civilization, so he needed to find water, locate food, and then try to make his way back to Allied forces.  At least it wasn’t cold here, living in a tent during an Alpine winter was an experience he never wanted to repeat.  It was hot, humid, but bearable with the constant breeze off the water.

Steve really, really missed his boots.

 

* * *

Hours later, he only felt that sentiment more deeply.  Water had been easy enough to locate -- there were several freshwater streams that emptied out onto the beach, and food had taken the form of small, starchy bananas that were nothing at all like the familiar ones at home, and some ripe pomegranates he had been lucky to find.  There had been other fruits too, unfamiliar ones, so assuming they weren’t poisonous he wasn’t likely to starve any time soon.  He’d need something more substantial than just fruit at some point, but maybe he’d make his way out of this wilderness before that became an issue.  If not -- Dum Dum’s stories of fishing had always sounded fun, and a knife gave him other options.

He had abandoned his initial plan to move inland fairly quickly, when the dense vegetation started making it hard to move freely, thorns and vines tearing at his exposed legs.  Now he followed the coastline, searching the land for any sign of people, and keeping an eye on the ocean in case he saw a ship.  There were no signs anywhere that humans had ever set foot on this island, other than the man in the cave.

Steve wasn’t happy with the picture the rough map in his mind was making either.  He had started out going west by southwest, and it looked like he was circling back around again.  If he had judged the distances correctly --

The next rise confirmed his initial fears.  There was a familiar rocky hill up ahead.  The shore hadn’t branched off at any point, and the horizon had been clear of both land and ship in every direction.

This was an island, and he was trapped on it.


	2. Chapter 2

Going back to the cave wasn’t an option, and the deep fatigue Steve could feel rising up from his bones meant that working his way inland wasn’t going to happen either.  He drifted while he worked, the gaping emptiness in his chest growing to turn everything grayer than the fading light could account for.

The knife was essential, and he used it to cut fruit, hack at vegetation, and finally start a fire on one of the dunes with the help of a piece of flint he had found.  _  Frenchy would be proud _ , he thought.  Dernier had been loudly outspoken about the importance of being able to start a fire anywhere, in any conditions, with whatever might be on hand.  He’d lecture them sometimes like a college professor, face solemn and hands gesticulating wildly, while Gabe translated and interjected his own commentary.   


_ Don’t stare into the fire, dumbass, you’ll ruin your night vision _ , Bucky’s voice said in his head, clear as if he had been sitting right by Steve’s side.  But Bucky was dead, and Frenchy and the rest of the Commandos were off fighting and maybe dying, and here was Steve, trapped and useless.

He felt a sob start clawing it’s way out from under the gray nothing, tearing at his throat and threatening to escape.

A loud splash, separate from the rhythmic crashing of the waves, pulled him out of his head.  He couldn’t see much -- Bucky was right, he always was -- but he was able to make out the shape of someone sitting in the surf, maybe a dozen yards away.

“You hungry, man?  Just fruit probably isn’t going to fill you up, you need to build up your strength.  I’ve got some fish here for you if you want it.”

“Who are you?”  Steve pulled himself to his feet, bracing himself in a fighting stance despite the pain in his abused muscles.  He centered himself, and used his best Captain voice, the one Marlene had drilled into him on the USO tour.  “Shorter vowels, darling, talk doesn’t have a ‘w’ in it.  And do pretend that those r’s aren’t desperately trying to escape from you.”  She had been a peach, that one, and hadn’t hesitated to draft Steve into helping her maintain the girl’s costumes once she found out he had a neat hand at sewing.  The sequins had looked impossibly tiny in his new giant hands, but the job had done more than almost anything else to help him adjust to his new body.

“My name’s Sam, like I tried to tell you before,” the man answered.  “I fished you out of the water after you crashed, been taking care of you for ages.  Honestly, I thought I was just making you comfortable until you died, but you’re tougher than you look.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”  Steve demanded.  Despite the phrasing, he hadn’t actually made it a question.

“Man, if I had wanted to do something to you I could have at any point while you were out of it.  Instead, I’ve been working my fins to the bone to keep you alive.”

Fins?  Steve brushed it aside and continued.  “You could be Hydra, or a Nazi.  How do I know you don’t work for my enemies?”

The man laughed, a rich sound so carefree that it hurt.  “Hydras are land creatures, my friend.  You’re not going to find one of those in the ocean.”  There was another loud splash, as if to punctuate his words.  “And his Imperiousness doesn’t want us getting involved in land conflicts, although that might change if y’all keep dumping stuff into our ocean.”

The answer...didn’t make sense.  Steve felt like there was something he was missing, something that would have been obvious if he was less tired, if the pain was less overwhelming.  The strength keeping him on his feet drained out of him all at once, like water, and he sat gracelessly back onto the sand.   


“I don’t understand how I got here,” Steve said.  “How you got here.  There aren’t any boats.”

Sam smiled.  “We swam here.  Now, do you want this fish or not?”

Steve nodded, filing that answer away for later.  “I’d be stupid to turn it down.”

“Hey man, you said it, not me.” 

Instead of standing up and walking out of the water, the man glided forward until he was just a couple of yards away from where the waves were crashing onto the sand before tossing a net over his shoulder.  Steve’s night vision was improving, but what he was seeing didn’t match up with what he expected.   


That dissonance just got worse when the man -- Sam -- hauled himself out of the water, dragging his legs behind him.

“Are you...are you paralyzed?” Steve asked.  It didn’t make sense, and yet -- the huge fin arcing out of the water behind Sam answered Steve’s question, but gave him a million more.

It was huge, flickering red in the firelight, fanning out at the end into fins that were nearly the width of Steve’s arms spread wide.  “...Oh,” Steve said, feeling faint.  It was a damn good thing he was already sitting down.

“Yea, oh,” Sam said dryly as he pulled himself up to the fire, curling his tail under him.  “You want to fillet these, or are you going to trust me near you with a knife?”

“Go...go ahead,” Steve said, trying not to stare.  It was hard, though, because the wet planes of Sam’s chest were glimmering in the light of the fire almost as much as his scales were.   


Scales, Jesus Christ.   


“You’re a mermaid?”

“Mermaid, really?  Mermaid?  Do I look like a woman to you?  Man, I think I liked you better when you were sleeping.”

Steve threw his hands up.  “No, I mean -- I’m sorry, I mean no offense, I just…”

Sam cut him off.  “I’m just teasing.  You’re land-folk, you don’t know any better.  But,” he said sternly, “don’t do it again.  I’m a mer _ man _ , I’ll thank you to know.  I may not have shoulders the size of a beluga like you, but I’m still all man.”

“My ma used to tell me stories sometimes, about the merrow,” Steve said, soft and wistful.  “But I thought they were just stories.”

“Every story comes from somewhere,” Sam said, “and some of them are even true.  I’m not merrow, though.  They tend to swim in colder waters.  I’m from the Aycayia pod originally, although my father was Argatean.”

Steve just nodded.  “That’s...that’s amazing.  Are there a lot of you, then?”

“You mean people who live underwater?  You do realize that only a tiny part of this planet is land, right?  And we’re not all stuck living on the same layer like foam on top of a wave.  I’d wager there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of you land-types.”  Sam had preparing the fish and was watching them cook, turning the stakes he had impaled them on every so often.   


“But -- how is it we’ve never seen you?  I don’t think my government has a clue you exist.”  Steve shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around the idea that there were millions, maybe more, of people living in the ocean.   


“That’s deliberate,” Sam said slowly.  “We used to have alliances with land-folk, treaties, trade.  But that never ended up so good for us.  So we learned that you can’t trust most land-folk farther than they can swim, and our king cut off contact.”

“Your king?  So you don’t get to make your own choices?”

Sam just laughed.  “We don’t have one of those Greek style mob-rule governments, no.  But Namor’s a good king, listens to advice sometimes, does what he has to in order to keep us safe.  Unlike you, we don’t need to go looking for fights -- they come looking for us.”

Steve tensed at the implication.  “What do you fight?  Who are your enemies?”

Sam shook his head.  “Again -- it’s not like that.  I can see what you’re thinking.  We don’t fight each other, there are enough things under the ocean that like the taste of mer-flesh to keep us busy.  Y’all should be thanking us for that, by the way, instead of dumping your garbage into the water.  Some of those things would find you very easy prey if we ever let them get that far.”  His eyes grew unfocused and distant as his entire bearing shifted.   


It was a look Steve recognized well -- he had seen it on Bucky, and on the men who had fought too long and lost too much, and on himself sometimes when he looked too long in the mirror.  He opened his mouth to say -- something, he wasn’t even sure what, when Sam suddenly burst into motion.

“Sweet Poseidon, look at this, you’re all distracting me and making me burn the fish.  I hope you like charcoal, because that’s what we’re having for dinner.”   


Steve smiled a little as he took one of the fish, still smoking slightly, stick hot enough from the fire to burn slightly.  It wasn’t as bad as Sam had made it sound, maybe a little overdone, but nowhere near as bad as the meals Falsworth had inflicted on them on those nights in the field when it was his turn on KP.  It was familiar somehow, even in this place that could have been his purgatory, punishment for surviving when he should have died.

Belly full, warm from the fire, and feeling like he might actually be safe, Steve laid down right in the sand and started to drift off.

“You’re going to regret that in the morning,” Sam said.  “How about you walk back to the cave and lay down inside?”

“Nope, not moving.”  Right on the verge of sleep, he reached out and grabbed Sam’s arm.  “The plane, where you found me -- there was a blue thing, a cube.”

“So you said.”  Sam’s tone was strange, but Steve was too tired to figure out what was hiding in it.  “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

 

* * *

Steve woke slowly, which spoke to his poor physical condition.  He had been trained, first in bootcamp and then by war, to wake quickly.  He didn’t know how bad his injuries had been when Sam fished him out of the wreckage of the plane, but they clearly weren’t completely healed.  Still, it seemed that the serum wouldn’t let him die.  Not yet.

The first thing he noticed was the sand, everywhere.  It had worked its way into his trunks, his eyes, even his mouth.  It wasn’t the worst way he had ever woken up, but it wasn’t pleasant.  Sam was gone, presumably back to the ocean, so Steve staggered off towards the surf to wash off the sand and maybe find Sam too.

He didn’t have a chance to go very far.  He had only taken a couple of steps when the ocean erupted, spraying him with saltwater and seaweed.  A man stood before him, feet planted in the waves, holding a trident in one hand.  He was dressed much the same as Steve, but his air of command was so absolute that his near-nudity did nothing to reduce his authority.  While he stood on two legs, Steve didn’t think he was human.

“You are the lander my Imperator found?  The one who sought to destroy a valuable farm with your metal and foul chemicals?”

Steve stiffened, straightening his back and pulling on his own command persona.  Arrogant men got under his skin faster than anything else.  The serum hadn’t changed that.  “The plane was not mine.  It was loaded with deadly weapons, enough to destroy the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.  The controls on it were damaged, crashing it was the only choice I had to save millions of lives.”

“Pah, what care have I for your petty land disputes?  You can all die and rot as far as I care, the world would be better off.”

“And just who are you to decide that?  Every life is worth something, every life is worth saving!”  Steve ground back, holding on to the ragged edges of his temper as best he could..

“Who am I?  Ignorant peasant.”  Steve could feel his disdain like a physical force.  “I am Namor, King of Atlantis, Emperor under the Waves, Ruler of the Seas!  Your words are pretty enough, but where was your concern for lost lives when you crashed your machine of death into my waters?  Do you know how many lives were lost when you did so?  Do you know how many may yet die because of the foul chemicals leaching out of that infernal machine and being carried by the tides?  Of course not.”  He sneered.  “Land-folk never care about any lives but their own.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond with hasty, angry words, but he stopped before he could utter them, hit by the truth of Namor’s accusation.  “I...you’re right, I’m sorry.  I didn’t give any thought to what might die when I crashed.  I didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of choices, and I didn’t know there were people underwater who would have been affected.  I’m sorry.”

The unexpected apology seemed to take the wind out of Namor’s sails.  “As you should be.  As it happens, our losses were minimal, although Imperator Wilson’s farm may be a lost cause.  And we’re containing the contamination as best we can, something we’ve become far too practised at.”

“Of course.”  Steve shook his head in realization.  “The submarines, all those ships that have been sunk -- our war must be doing terrible things to your kingdom.”

“Yes.  Now, there is another matter we must discuss.  Imperator Wilson said you wanted to know what had become of this...thing.”   


Out of seemingly nowhere -- where could he have been holding it?  It’s not like those shorts had room for pockets -- Namor pulled out the cosmic cube, encased in a translucent shell of some kind.

“ _ Destroy.  It. _ ”  Steve didn’t recognize his own voice.  It sounded rough, elemental, what a mountain might sound like if a mountain could talk.  It was rage and loathing made audible.  “It’s evil.  It will destroy you and all of your people.  I wanted to crash deep enough that nobody would ever find it again, but --”

Namor looked on as Steve’s voice cracked, and his arrogant bearing softened, just a little.  “I will see to it,” he said.  “Imperator Wilson has requested that I leave you alive, and as you do not seem to pose an immediate danger to my people I will allow it.  But know this, lander -- harm one hair on his head and I will eat your heart while you watch.  IMPERIUS REX.”  Another giant wave rose up behind him, and crashed over them both.

Steve rubbed the water off his face.  Namor was gone when he opened his eyes.

“And that, my friend, was Namor.  King of Atlantis, Emperor under the Waves, and so on, and so forth,” said Sam from off to one side.  “I’m impressed, he likes you.”

“He looked at me like he wanted to gut me,” Steve said.

“Yes, but he  _ didn’t _ .  That’s practically a declaration of undying fraternity.”

Steve moved closer and sat so the waves ran up over his feet.  “Imperator Wilson, he said.  Is that you?”

Sam nodded.  “Yea, man, that’s me.  Or, it used to be.  That’s not who I am anymore.”

“What did you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was a soldier.  A good one, my partner and I were seconded to Namor.  We defended him from raids, fought at his side, protected our people on his orders.  Even died for him.  After that...I couldn’t do it anymore.  Fighting didn’t make any sense without Riley right there next to me.”

Steve nodded, caught up in his own memories.  “Bucky -- my friend, my brother -- he died.  Just a few weeks ago.  It was my fault, my stupid plan, and he died protecting me.”   


Something broke inside of him with those words, and he pretended that the moisture on his face was salt water from the sea.  Sam’s understanding presence was a quiet comfort.  

 

* * *

“Tell me about your farm,” Steve asked one day.  It had been over a week since Namor’s visit, and the weakness in his bones was finally gone, along with the persistent, gnawing hunger that had been such a constant since the serum that he hadn’t even noticed it anymore.

Sam had noticed, though, and showed up one day with a tuna the size of Steve’s leg.

“Caught this little guy for you, don’t you dare let any of it go to waste,” he had said, and Steve had taken him at his word.  Food was abundant here, from the sea and from the island, and there was no reason for him not to eat his fill.

With the return of his strength came boredom.  Steve wasn’t built for being idle -- even when he had been sick he’d draw until he couldn’t hold a pencil, and downtime on the front usually meant darning socks or knitting new ones for the men under his command.  Trench foot was a serious threat to every soldier, and there were never enough dry socks on a long march.  This, long stretches of hours where he had nothing but time, nothing to do, was even more alien than the trees he had no names for.

If he didn’t find something to do with himself he was going to lose his mind.

Sam raised one eyebrow at the question.  “My farm?”

“Yea,” Steve agreed.  “I have no idea what you’d farm in the ocean.  Fish?”

“You’re not wrong, but that’s only a part of what I do,” Sam said.  “Most of my focus is on sargassum.”

“Wait,” Steve said, brow furrowing.  “Isn’t that the brown leafy stuff that washes up on the beach?  It seems like there’s a lot of it around.  Why would you need to farm it?”

“Have you tried eating any of it yet?”

“What?”

“The sargassum that washes up on the beach.  Have you tried eating it?”

Steve shook his head.  “No, I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Maybe you should,” Sam replied.  “But honestly, it’s not that great.  Edible, but it’s on the bitter side.  I cultivate different varieties with better flavor, some that are better cooked, most that are excellent without any preparation.  Most merfolk don’t bother with cooking.”

“Makes sense,” Steve agreed.

“But,” Sam continued, leaning forward a bit, “that’s not all.  See, seaweeds usually grow best in the cooler months, when everything else is kind of dormant.  The seasonal variance isn’t as pronounced in this area as it is closer to the poles, but it’s still there.  So in the winter the little baby seaweed just blooms, sucking up all the nitrogen in the water, so by the time everything else starts growing and needing that nitrogen, the seaweed has already gotten most of what it needed, and it’s large enough to shelter and feed other things, like schools of fish.”   


It was fun watching Sam talk about something he so clearly loved.  His hands made circles in the air, and his fins flared out when he got really excited.

“So I can deliberately introduce certain kinds of fish into my sargassum beds, right, and give them a safe place to live, and maybe do a little extra to chase off larger predators myself.  Not too much, though, sharks and dolphins have to eat too.  Everything needs to stay in balance.  So now we have more of the fish we want to eat, so we can harvest them without impacting the rest of the ecosystem.”

“Sam…” Steve shook his head as he trailed off.  “Sam, that’s amazing.  I never imagined…”

“Oh, but there’s more,” Sam said, cutting him off.  “See, that just covers everything from the top of the water down to the seabed.  But I manage the seabed underneath the sargassum too, seeding it with shellfish and crab depending on the environment.  The shellfish eat the bits of sargassum that drop down and the scraps from the fish, which means that you, in turn, can eat your body weight in oysters like you did last night.”

They had been delicious, and had tasted like home.  His ma had made oysters at least once a week when he was very young, because they had been cheap and plentiful at the docks, right off the boat, until they had stopped pulling oysters out of the harbor because of the filth and pollution.

“That’s incredible,” Steve said, eyes shining.  “I’ve looked at the ocean before, but it was always just that place where fish came from, or something that was between me and where I needed to be.  But you’re there, and it’s your home, and you’re growing all these living things!  It’s incredible.”   _ You’re incredible _ , he thought, but he didn’t let himself say it, even when Sam waved his words off.  “I wish there was something I could do to help you.”

Sam looked thoughtful.  “You know, if you’re any good with those giant hands of yours there might be something you can do after all.”

Braiding rope was harder work than Steve had ever imagined, but it was unexpectedly satisfying to start with a pile of seagrass and end up with something...useful.  Eventually.  His first attempts were laughably bad, even if Sam had been too kind to say so.   


But it was nice, having something to do.  Steve would start his mornings out by running around the island until he felt like he was present in his skin again, and then would braid rope and use it to lash together drying frames for some of the sargassum that Sam harvested.  He learned how to smoke it, how to cook with it, how to take the rope he had braided with his own hands and turn it into nets for carrying or fishing or even sleeping.

The nightmares didn’t stop, nor did the guilt at being here, alive, when so many were still fighting and dying, but at some point the progression of days stopped feeling like a punishment.


	3. Chapter 3

The breeze off the water felt amazing, and the chorus of birds from the forest and the crash of the ocean formed a soothing backdrop.  Steve wasn’t tired, but as he swayed in the hammock he had made with his own hands he found himself feeling a deep contentment, a relaxation that went down to his bones.  It wasn’t something he could ever remember feeling.  Even as a child, his memories were tinged with constant pain and nagging hunger.

Sam rocked in his own hammock next to him, fins hanging slightly over the side.   


“So why do you have a tail when Namor has legs?” Steve asked idly.

Sam’s hammock creaked as he rolled onto his side to look at Steve directly.  “Oh my god, you can’t just go around asking people why they don’t have legs.  Because I was born with it, what the hell do you think?  Where the hell are your gills?  Seriously man, sometimes you act like I’m the first mer-person you’ve ever met.”

Steve went red, with embarrassment this time, and not because he had spent too long in the sun.  “Oh god, Sam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to --”

“Nah man, we’re cool,” Sam said as he rolled back onto his back.  “I already know you’re an asshole, that’s no surprise.  But seriously, most merfolk have fins.  Some have legs.  A very few have both.  It’s just the way it is.”

Steve went back to rocking, trying to find his previous peace.  Sam was too good to him sometimes.

“Besides,” Sam said a few minutes later, mischief clear in his voice, “I do have legs.”  He reached out and kicked Steve with a well-shapen foot that Steve caught out of reflex.

Steve had no idea what he felt as he traced his fingers over the delicate bones of Sam’s foot, across his toes, along the high arch, other than awe, and shock, and wonder.   


“Okay now, that’s enough,” Sam said as he pulled his foot back.   


Steve rolled over to face him and ended up getting an eyeful of...Sam.  Sam, who wore no clothes, ever, which was a familiar (if slightly maddening) sight, but also -- Sam, with feet, and two legs, and a cock laying heavy between them, and  _ no fucking clothes _ .  Steve pulled his eyes up to Sam’s face quickly and kept them there, determined not to stare.  Because it was different, that was all.  He wasn’t used to Sam being this kind of naked.  There wasn’t anything deeper in it.

“So, um,” he squeaked before clearing his throat.  “So why haven’t you ever done that before?” Steve asked.   


Sam kept rocking, uncovered and unconcerned.  “No real need to.  I mean, I switch sometimes when I want to harvest something farther ashore, but they’re awkward and kind of hard to use.  I have no idea how you manage without fins.”

“I could, you know, help you get used to them,” Steve said, mouth feeling dry.

“Okay,” Sam agreed easily, “but on one condition.  You’ve got to learn how to swim better.”

Steve just nodded.  This might end up being a terrible mistake.

 

* * *

It didn’t feel like a mistake the next morning when Steve went for his run, this time with Sam at his side.   At least, Sam started out next to him, but the slow pace made Steve feel like he was going to crawl out of his own skin.

“Go on,” Sam huffed out, “I’ll catch up.  Eventually.”

“Yea, okay,” Steve agreed before bounding off, spraying sand behind him.  He looped around the island in record time with fresh motivation, which was rewarded when he saw Sam up ahead.  Steve slowed slightly so he could take a little more time to enjoy the view.  Sam had put on shorts for their run, the same kind he had brought for Steve and that Namor wore, but they did nothing to hide Sam’s muscles shifting under his skin.  It was possibly the best view on the island, Steve thought, and he had had ample opportunity to explore all of them.   


He sped up again as he drew closer, putting on an extra burst of speed.  “Come on, Sam, is that really the best you can do?” he called out.   


“You’re an asshole,” Sam panted, “I just want you to know that.”

“On your left,” Steve called out as he passed Sam.  The cursing behind him was almost as satisfying as the view had been, and he pushed himself harder than before to make that loop again as fast as possible.

“On your left,” he called out again with a smug grin as he lapped Sam a second time.  Really, he probably shouldn’t be having this much fun with it, but Sam’s frustrated anger was kind of fun.  And he wasn’t actually doing too badly in all honesty.  He couldn’t keep up with Steve at top speed, but he probably could have kept up with the Howlies without too much trouble.

The thought of the Howlies hit him like a bullet, and he found himself running faster, pushing harder, trying to outpace the pain of loss and abandonment, the hurt that was only barely scabbed over and kept ripping open and bleeding.

He saw Sam up ahead, sitting with his back against a tree, legs stretched out in front of him.  “I just want you to know I hate you,” he said cheerfully as Steve walked up and plopped down next to him on the sand.   


“I know you do,” Steve agreed, taking a chance and burying his head against Sam’s shoulder, taking the comfort he still didn’t know how to ask for.  “I know.”

Sam’s arm came up around his shoulders, pulling him close.  It felt like coming home.

 

* * *

“You did it again.”  That was Sam’s voice, warm and amused.  No big surprise, since it was just the two of them here.

“Mmmm,” Steve hummed in response, not quite ready to wake up.

“You’re like a sea lion, always wanting to sun yourself after you eat, but unlike a sea lion you don’t have any kind of protection from the sun.  Why does your skin even do that, man? You look like a damn urchin, all red like that"

Oh hell.  He must be sunburned again.  Steve tried moving his shoulders, just a little, and...yep.  “Ow, fuck.  Dammit, Sam, why did you let me do that?”

Sam shook his head.  “Hey now, you were awake and unburned when I left to check the kelp beds, so you absolutely cannot put this one on me.  Just because you gorged on conch and can’t seem to move your tail up to the cave after...I swear, I’ve seen baby turtles with better self-preservation instincts.”

“Can you yell at me at some point when I’m not suffering maybe?” Steve asked plaintively.

“Man, you’re lucky you’re cute,” Sam said.  Steve tried to ignore the way his heart flipped in his chest at that.  “Meet me in the cave, I made up a salve after the last time your dumb ass did this.”

Steve made his way to the pool at the back of the cave and braced himself before ducking into the salt water.  He hissed as it stung his abused skin, then splashed water in the general direction of the soft chuckle he heard behind him.

“You’d think you’d learn at some point,” Sam said with that bright grin that always made Steve want to smile back, even when he had felt like he’d never smile again.  Sam might not be human, but he was still proof -- proof that there was a way to live, a way to be happy, even after war and loss hollowed you out and left nothing but ashes behind.

“You know me, dumb as rocks,” Steve said back.   


“And ain’t that just the truth,” Sam said as he reached for a small ceramic jar.  “Now turn around.”

Sam’s hands moved across his skin, strong and sure, rubbing in the salve that cooled the heat of the burn, but didn’t do anything to the soft heat of Sam’s palms, tracing circles across his back.

The cave hadn’t changed much in the past couple of months, but somehow it had grown as familiar and comfortable as the apartment he used to share with Bucky back in Brooklyn. His shield, fished out of the wreckage of the plane, was now mounted up on one wall.  The sight of it no longer felt like an accusation, a reminder that while he was here he was neglecting his duty, that men were dying because he wasn’t there to take those bullets for them.  Namor had refused to expend any effort to return him to his people, especially since he knew about the people of the sea.  There was no oath he could give that the King of Atlantis would accept.   


“Landers have sworn oaths to me before,” he had said.  “And all of them were broken.  You are not so special that I would trust you with the safety of all of my people.”

Steve had raged at first, with words and then with his fists, and that was when he came to learn that Namor was as strong as he was -- maybe stronger.  He had ended up as battered as any back-alley brawl had ever left him, but he had also come out of the fight with someone who might not ever be a friend, but who was at least a trusted ally.

“Y’all are both weird as hell,” had been Sam’s comment when he saw Steve and Namor, both bruised and bleeding, grasping forearms with the respect one warrior accorded to another.

The burning had stopped, leaving nothing but peace and deep relaxation in its wake.  Steve let out an involuntary groan of pleasure that echoed off the cave walls.  The sudden sound startled him and made him uncomfortably aware of something else that had started happening too, the sharp burn of arousal and the rush of blood downwards.  This was -- unexpected.  Before the serum, he hadn’t had much of a sex drive.  He had partners before, of course, sometimes women from his art classes or who he met at his political meetings, a handful of women who were willing to overlook his shortcomings for a night, but more frequently they had been men, met in the clubs that everyone knew about but pretended they didn’t, men who liked his small size and delicate features.

After the serum it had felt like a soft breeze could get him off, and there had been no shortage of volunteers to help him out.  Norma and Louise usually bunked together in more ways than one, but they had liked inviting him to share sometimes.  It had been fun in a way that few things were in those days, and seeing the love between them had felt like a gift.

Things had changed once he reached the front, once he saw what was left of the men who hadn’t survived Azzano, once he had faced combat and worn the blood of men who had once been friends.  The physical urges had faded, lost behind fatigue and hunger and the gray emptiness that seemed to grow larger every day.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had even felt the urge for release.

But this -- here, in this place that was starting to feel like home, where the war couldn’t reach, with Sam’s hands on him, gentle but capable of such strength?  Steve suddenly felt a rush of desire so strong that he might have fallen if he hadn’t already been sitting down.   


Oh -- oh no.

Sam was attractive, he’d have to be blind not to notice.  But this...this was more.  This wasn’t just the way he looked with drops of water rolling down the hard planes of his chest, or the way the muscles in his arms moved when he hauled a load of sargassum onto the shore to dry.  It was the way his fingers moved when he knotted a new net, the way eyes lit up when he smiled, the line of his throat when he threw his head back in a full-body laugh.  The way Sam had just known how to get him through those nights when the nightmares had him by the throat and wouldn’t let him go, because Sam had them too.

They had shared stories at night, in the dark, when it was easier to talk.  Steve had talked about growing up fighting his own body, his ma, losing Bucky to his own hubris, and Sam -- Sam had talked about the deepwater leviathans, the krakens, the older and stranger things that didn’t always have names but were always hungry.  It was one of those nameless things that had taken Riley, who had been fighting next to Sam at one moment and was then gone the next.  Sam knew what it was like, because he had been there, was still there in some ways.

Oh fuck.  This wasn’t good at all.

Because -- because Sam wasn’t human.  Because Sam was from a completely different culture, an alien culture, that Steve had only brushed the surface of.  Because he had no idea what kind of people Sam was attracted to.  If he was attracted to anybody.  If attraction across species lines was taboo, or if same gender attraction was as taboo as it was in most of American culture.  Because Sam had saved his life, kept him alive, taught him how to smile again.

Because Sam was the only other person for hundreds of miles, and if Steve managed to drive him away he’d be completely alone.

He jumped out of the water and scooted over to his bed, pulling one of the reed mats over his lap to disguise his erection.  Sam looked shocked, confused.

“Ah -- thanks, Sam, I think I’m good, I’m just going to…”  Steve looked around the cave, desperate for inspiration.  “Ah, sleep.  I’m going to sleep now I think.”

Sam still looked confused, but he grinned, just a little.  “Man, you just woke up.  And now you’re going to sleep again?”

Fuck.

“Ah, the burn, maybe...it will...heal faster?”  Steve cursed the tentativeness in his voice.  But Sam just shook his head and laughed.

“Yea, okay, you get your beauty sleep.  I need to take a closer look at the latest batch of kelp, I think I’ve got a couple strains that might actually grow properly in these waters with a little work.”  He waved before diving back down, flipping his tail up out of the water once in farewell.

Steve knocked his head into the rock wall of the cave one and groaned.  This was going to complicate everything.

 

* * *

Sam hadn’t been joking about teaching Steve to swim properly, and wasn’t one to overlook a chance to get his revenge for the running.

“You might not have noticed,” he said, “but you’re kind of surrounded by water.  Storms are a thing.  Tides, currents, and I’m not always around to fish your dumb ass out.  Just because you’ve somehow managed to not die so far doesn’t mean you’re going to keep that up.”

Which was -- fair.  And death didn’t seem nearly so appealing as it had all those months ago on that plane.  Not when he had amazing sunrises and sunsets over the water, all the seafood and fruit he could eat seasoned with herbs that Sam had taught him how to find, even work, something to fill the hours, helping Sam preserve the sargasso and seagrasses he farmed, weaving nets and hammocks, brainstorming ways to make kelp grow in warmer Southern waters.   


He had...a home.  Not one he would have ever imagined for himself, and there were still days when the guilt at not having been able to do more for the war effort, at not having been able to save more lives, burned deep.  But there had been fewer of those since Namor had sent word that the war had ended.  If there was no fighting, there was no need for Captain America, so maybe Steve Rogers was allowed to have this.

“Enough drifting on the tide, Steve, get your tail in the water.  It’s time to swim,” Sam said with more enthusiasm than he ever showed for their morning runs.

Ever since he had been given the serum, Steve picked up physical skills quickly.  Which he regretted in this moment, and also didn’t, because feeling Sam’s hands on him guiding his strokes was the best kind of torture.   


It was a damn good thing he had gotten more practiced at controlling his physical reactions, although there had been times when he thought that maybe Sam had noticed.  That maybe Sam had liked what he’d seen.

It was maddening.

Several weeks into swimming lessons had Steve doing laps around the cove, cutting through the water with practiced strokes that worked the muscles in his back and arms, leaving him as tired and satisfied afterwards as his runs did.

There was no warning the first time it happened.  He was concentrating on his stroke, working on streamlining his arms when Sam’s hands were suddenly there on his shoulders, dunking him underwater.

“On your left,” Sam said with a grin as he swam lazily backwards, flicking his tail to keep him just out of Steve’s reach.

“Dammit, Sam, that’s not even fair!  I don’t have a tail,” Steve sputtered.   


“I know, but I try not to bring up your physical shortcomings.  It must be hard having only a perfect specimen of manhood like me to compare yourself to,” Sam replied.

Steve started swimming faster, redoubling his efforts to catch up, but Sam stayed just out of reach, not looking like he was putting any effort in at all.   


Without warning he flipped and dove deep, arcing out of the water for a moment before his tail splashed back down.  Sam was so damn beautiful it hurt sometime.

Steve kept swimming, pushing himself to be faster, smoother, to glide through the water instead of forcing his way through.  And every so often…

“On your left,” with another grin.

“On your left,” Sam said, tossing a jellyfish onto Steve’s head.

“On your left,” Sam said as he pulled himself onto the rock where Steve was trying to catch his breath.

And in that moment it was the easiest thing in the world for Steve to reach over and kiss him.  The fingers in his hair pulling him closer felt like a benediction.  Sam tasted like salt, and sunlight, and peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting - I had no internet yesterday, and then didn't get back home until around 1AM because of some dramatic weather-related road problems. I have a short piece in this 'verse that's finished that will go up next week - probably not on Sunday because I'm traveling again, but likely on Monday. Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally planned to be a one-shot, but I have more scenes and short vignettes that didn't fit into this piece that I still want to write. Like how SHIELD finds out that Steve is still alive, among other things. So if there's anything you'd like to see - where's Redwing? Does Sam become Falcon? - hit me up either here or on [tumblr](http://machine-dove.tumblr.com) and I'll see what I can do!


End file.
